[cperciva]

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at too. :-)

I originally wrote the puzzle without reference to string theory, then added the "extra credit" part mainly as a hint.

[dbfclark]

Sure. Moonshine I know a lot about, relative to physics at least. Given that I now work somewhere that specializes in term embeddings, it kind of feels like I've spent half my life injecting stuff into vector spaces...